


This is Halloween

by sororexitium



Series: Peter's Special Power Is Wrapping Tony Around His Tiny Finger [9]
Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Tony is an awesome dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-02
Updated: 2015-11-02
Packaged: 2018-04-29 12:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5127599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sororexitium/pseuds/sororexitium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seriously, if Peter is excited enough to sit down and let Natasha style his hair when he usually runs and hides under his bed, there’s no way Tony can keep Halloween away. </p>
<p>And if he can’t murder the evil holiday and hide the remains of its body somewhere far, far away, he’s just going to have to do what he always does. Add the Stark name to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is Halloween

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I meant to post this by yesterday and surprise you all that, HEY, I am still alive and I do still have ideas for this verse and, really, all my verses. 
> 
> It's just that I suck anymore at convincing myself to open my computer and type them up. 
> 
> Sorry! I'll try to keep on top of things better now that I seem to have a few thing sorted out.

It starts about a week after the Tower is broken into.

The team is on down time because they’ve all taken an emotional crash and they all know it’s best to regroup, to take time as a family and be with Peter. The only reason they leave the tower is for interrogations with the surviving criminals, to obtain more food, and, after three days of holding Peter back, to take their favorite little boy to school. Even Thor hangs back after making sure Darcy is okay and usually he’s all too content to stay with Jane half of his week at least.

Peter has been glued to them, each of them in turn depending on who’s doing what at the time. He likes to be with Tony and Steve more than anyone else, asking to be picked up and carried around and even though he’s just turned five and they should really be discouraging that type of behavior, they both spend a good portion of their day with a small child in their arms. They do it gladly too.

It’s not just them that Peter demands attention from.

Aunt Nat often has him in her lap, and twice they’ve been caught napping together on the couch, throw pulled over their shoulders and Finding Nemo playing in the background. She curls around him, protecting him from every angle she possibly can.

Clint has been more agreeable to waffles and bacon even though he is very much not a morning person. He cooks while Bruce does science-y type things with Peter and by the time breakfast is done the kitchen is a mess chemistry and waffle batter. They all have to take turns cleaning it, but no one complains because Pete smiles at them as they eat around the large dining table that usually only gets hauled out for special occasions.

Tonight starts out with Pete demanding Thor make him fly. It never even passes Thor’s mind to say no. He just gracefully collapses from his feet to his back and beckons Peter closer before hoisting the boy to balance on his feet, arms held out to his side and making whooshing noises. Thor can hold him like that for a good hour and make it look easy while watching Nemo for the millionth time and still looking far too interested in it as he has a quiet conversation with Pete about who knows what.

Tony watches from the couch, curled up against Steve without a care in the world for the fishes on the screen. He’s to the point he can quote this entire movie in his sleep and probably has more than once. It doesn’t matter to him. Not as much as watching his son does anyway.

He’s still so high strung from the attack a week ago, shoulders refusing to loosen, mind a constant roar of information, anticipation, and worry. He hasn’t averaged much more than about two hours of sleep since it happened and he knows it’s beginning to show. He thinks Steve and the Avengers might be planning an intervention, not that it will do him much good. He can’t take his eyes off of his son.

Even when he goes to steal him from his bed, tucking him in next to him, all he ends up doing is tucking him close and petting his hair until Petey gets too hot and starts fussing. Then he waits a few minutes and starts the entire process all over again. He knows it’s probably not helpful to Peter, but like hell he can stop himself.

He’s watching Peter fly, watching him giggle like a week ago there wasn’t attacked in their own home. It helps his heart but he still worries.

And then Peter says: “I wanna be Superman for Halloween.”

It’s a testament to how much dread fills him that his first thought isn’t even to be offended that his own baby doesn’t want to be Iron Man.

Halloween. A holiday made for bad things to happen (fallacy, some part of his brain murmurs, giving him all the historical information on Halloween’s birth into the world). Crowds of people, all pressed together wearing masks and get ups. It would be so easy for Peter to be stolen. He was so small and so fast. If he got ahead of him in anyway, Tony wouldn’t stand a chance of getting to him in time. He could be kidnapped, held in a dirty truck, and hurt!

His mind just loops all the ways he wouldn’t be able to save his son and all the horrendous things that could happen.

“Oh fuck…” Steve smacks his arm lightly. A reprimand for his language surely, but Tony reels around to look at him with wide incredulous eyes, because seriously!? How is he not panicking? How are they _all_ not panicking?

He looks around and they all look so calm. Clint hasn’t even taken his eyes away from the movie. Like Dory repeating “Just keep swimming” is more important than the fact that his son wants to go get candy injected with barbiturates! Do they not see how monumentally bad this is?

It doesn’t even register the way they’ve all stiffened up or how their hands have all tightened fractionally as if closing around their weapon of choice. That’s not even on his radar because he looks at Steve and he’s given a look in return that clearly illustrate his thoughts. ‘Do not blow this out of proportion, Tony.’

Too. Fucking. Late.

And that must read on his face because next he knows, Steve is placing his hand on his thigh and squeezing just hard enough to let him know to keep his mouth shut while he answers their son, “We’ll see what we can find, buddy.”

It’s illogical how much he despises his boyfriend in this one moment.

*

It registers that this entire Halloween thing probably wouldn’t bother him so much if they had any sort of answer as to why the Tower had been attacked in the first place. If they knew they were there for information, or to steal priceless technology, or even to start a paint ball war in his pool while drinking all of his very expensive alcohol.

But they don’t know!

And it’s driving Tony mad…er. Madder.

He’s lost a lot of sleep in his life. Being a genius and getting on tears of pure creation tended to do that and then in conjunction with his nightmares, his travelling, and his business, sleep was sometimes a foreign concept. He still doesn’t think he’s lost as much sleep as he has going over every single security footage JARVIS had taken while the tower was being infiltrated.

He tracks each subject’s movement, searches through the areas they touched again and again looking for something that Natasha or Fury might have missed with all of their underlings. Tasha tells him firmly and without a moment’s hesitation that there is nothing there. No computers were touched inside the facility. Nothing was taken. Nothing was loaded into the mainframe. Nothing!

Natasha’s secret ally took care of most of the strike team with a deadly accuracy, leaving only a few in the elevator to interrogate and they’re almost as fucking annoying as Hydra agents with how tightlipped they are. They won’t say a damn word. Indeed, one of them _can’t_ because he doesn’t have a _tongue_. The other one just stares down anyone who interrogates him, this smug look on his face that he wants to punch right off. He’s not sure how Natasha doesn’t, because he speaks French, and what the man repeatedly calls her is rude as fuck.

He doesn’t know what to do with the not knowing. It’s a constant smack to his face and he begins to suspect they truly were there for Peter and that thought just gnaws at him until he can’t think straight.

He is literally considering cancelling Halloween.

“You know we have to let him go trick or treating, Tony,” Steve says as Tony crawls into bed two weeks later with a sleeping kindergartener held in his arms. He wasn’t awake when Tony went to retrieve Peter from his bed after another night of trying to let them get back to normal and failing so completely. They hadn’t even been talking about Halloween before they went to bed. They were watching the news! Steve is getting far too good at reading his mind and he does not approve. “He’s five and all of his classmates are excited to go. You can’t hold him back from something like that.”

Tony does not agree.

“Sure I can,” he argues, settling Peter down between them and keeping his voice pitched low so as not to wake him. “Our home was attacked less than a month ago. He’s lucky I let him go to school. I thought about the merits of homeschooling for at least a good three days. I still go back and forth on it now.”

Steve sighs softly, raising the blanket over Peter’s body, tucking it in gently around his shoulders. “I know. Really, I get it. It’s nerve-wracking, for all of us. We’re all just about ready to go on lockdown and form a barrier around Peter…but we’d only be doing it for our sake. It’s not good for Pete. He needs to get back to his regular routine and get back to being a normal little boy.”

“But he’s not!” Tony says louder than he intended, Peter stirring just a little. He clamps his lips shut, watching to see if he wakes up while Steve pets his hand through his hair. It takes several moments, both of them waiting to be sure they haven’t woken the little boy.

When it becomes apparent that all Peter is going to do is make a quiet little noise and shuffle closer to Steve’s heat, Tony lets out a quiet breath and continues on in a more subdued tone. “He’s not a normal little boy. He’s our little boy and he runs around every day with a bunch of super heroes. His favorite people to be around is a man from the forties who doesn’t look a day over twenty-seven and a woman who’s entire childhood was spent learning how to eviscerate people without blinking an eye. We have enemies who would sell their soul to the devil himself to find a chink in our armor and I brought him home on my hip! He’s not normal and he needs more protection!”

“Tony,” he shakes his head, reaching across Peter to cup Tony’s neck, grounding him in the only way he knows how. “You cannot offer more protection than you already have. Literally, you cannot. If you go beyond what you have now, it’s not protection. It’s hiding…sheltering...and you don’t want to do that to him. I know you don’t.”

“So what am I supposed to do, Steve? Just ignore the fact that the Avengers have very serious enemies, or that I don’t have competitors who would literally kill for any given one of my designs, let’s not even count my suit. That all of us here have something someone _desperately_ wants? That his entire family was gunned down for reasons no one can explain? And just a short year later our home was broken into while the entire Avengers team was out on a mission? Am I supposed to ignore that?”

“I’m _not_ saying that. Of course I’m not saying that. I’m just saying…” he takes a deep breath, shrugging and hoping for the best when he continues. “Let him live his life. You can’t see the future, Tony. You don’t have that kind of technology. The best any of us can hope to do is be there when he needs us.”

Tony snorts. He’s not completely pacified by that. In fact if anything, it makes him feel worse because the two times his son has needed him, he showed up after everything was said and done. He spent the night locked in a closet after his family had been murdered and then again in a ceiling while his baby sitter (badass though she totally is) lead a crew of armed men on a merry chase and both times, all Tony was really there for was the cleanup. “Yeah…I’m doing a bang up job of that so far.”

Steve reaches up and flicks his ear. Hard, he might add. “Hey. Stop it. You’re there for what matters. Trust me; that’s all he really wants in the long run.”

It’s something they should both know, seeing as how Steve’s father died before he was even a year old and Tony’s father was absent at the best of times. Tony has a hard time with it though.

Tony sighs, drawn out and tired, leaning back against the headboard. He doesn’t say anything for a long time, and he’s sure Steve can smell the turmoil coming off of him in waves. When he does open his mouth, Steve looks like he’s preparing himself for another dispute, but to his eternal but delightful surprise all Tony says is, “It’s time for bed.”

Steve smiles up at him, nodding once as they rearrange themselves again and get comfortable under the covers only pausing to sneak in a quick kiss. Tony faces his son, Peter still snuggled in close to his Cap’s side, leeching all of the warmth from him. It’s an adorable picture and one he wants to keep forever so he takes a picture really quick, causing Steve to give him a look.

“Just the one,” he promises, sending it out to the team, Darcy, Jane, Pepper and Rhodey.

Darcy sends one back of Peter doing the same thing with Clint with the text underneath: _Shh. He doesn’t know I took this._

Badass, he thinks again. He’s going to buy this woman the internet.

*

Tony agonizes over the idea of Halloween for the next month. Of course, it doesn’t help that Halloween decorations fly up at a rate that Tony would find disturbing. He’s sure it happens faster this year than any other year he’s been alive. The holiday is taunting him, pumpkins being set on display, plastic ghost and spider webs attaching themselves to every window and storefront, giant smiling purple spiders and bats on ceilings. It’s horrible.

Peter just gets more and more excited and even though he doesn’t want to, Tony finds it so endearing it almost hurts. He can’t say no to Peter. Even if he wanted to, Natasha pretty much puts a stop to that when she picks him up from school one day and comes back to the tower with a Superman costume and something for herself hidden in a white plastic dress bag. She raises one brow at him and then unleashes his son with the soft and unassuming words, “Why don’t you show daddy your costume, Petey?”

She is the devil in disguise.

But Peter does show him, pulling out a monstrosity of red and blue that makes Steve’s suit seem tame. He strips down to his underwear right there in the middle of the kitchen, eager to put it on and show Tony just how awesome he looks and he does. God, he looks so damn adorable.

Natasha had taken him to an actual costume shop and bought him the entire kit and caboodle. Peter’s got the pants and the shirt, red underwear worn on the outside complete with belt because after eighty years and four different actors no one’s stopped to redesign the hideous outfit. Then there’s the cape and the red boots and “Aunt Nat said she’d help me with my hair!”

Seriously, if Peter is excited enough to sit down and let Natasha style his hair when he usually runs and hides under his bed, there’s no way Tony can keep Halloween away.

And if he can’t murder the evil holiday and hide the remains of its body somewhere far, far away, he’s just going to have to do what he always does. Add the Stark name to it.

He strolls into Pepper’s office the very next day, two weeks away from Halloween and plops himself down next to the “Tony Paperwork” side of her desk, picks up a pen and begins reading the document.

All motion next to him stops. This is why he could never be a spy. He doesn’t do inconspicuous at all.

There’s about another two pages worth of reading before her pen drops down with a snap against the expensive black glass and she turns to look at him with this expectant look in her eyes.

“What do you want?” she asks, no holds barred.

Tony puts his paper down. “Why do you always assume I want something when I come to do my work?”

“Because you do. Now out with it.”

He feels that she knows him just a little too well. It’s unfair. But at the same time, so convenient it almost hurts. He turns in his seat, tossing the paper away from him carelessly with a mental note to come back for it again soon, because it was actually somewhat interesting. “How fast can we arrange a Halloween party in the Tower? The works? Like this place is huge. I know we can fit in a hay ride if we really want to.”

Pepper blinks at him, lips tightening into a thin line and he’s sure he’s getting ready to be lectured so hard for this. It’s gotta be like super short notice or there’s a bad idea hidden in there somehow. He doesn’t know, but that look always says she’s about to school him in the error of his ways.

It turns out she’s trying not to smile. “Steve and I have been waiting for you to come to this conclusion for a month, Tony.”

It’s Tony’s turn to blink. “You do what now?”

She shakes her head fondly, pulling a drawer in her desk open to grab a folder. “Tony, it is a well known fact that if you cannot ignore something into submission, you take it over. Steve told me you were panicking about Peter trick or treating so your logical choice would be to move the holiday into a secure location where you can literally watch everything like a hawk. Naturally, that means the tower. He came to me about three weeks ago with this plan and I’ve been looking into it with Natasha.”

“Still the worst idea letting you two meet.”

“You’re the one who hired her. We just bonded over stupid men and pink martinis. Now, I’ve found a couple of different schematics and compiled a list of activities, including trick or treating and a raffle for the adults the proceeds of which will be donated to a local children’s hospital.” She takes a deep breath and proceeds to outline a Halloween party that would make him jealous if he weren’t the one hosting it. She even has a portion of the first floor being emptied out for a haunted tour and though there is no hay ride there is pumpkin carving and bobbing for apples.

“Can I just ask…when were you planning on telling me this?”

Pepper continues moving papers around like he hadn’t asked his question, pausing in her planning just long enough to say, “When you got your head out of your ass. Do you have a costume? This will be a costume party. Everyone has to dress up. And before you say it,” she says, effectively stopping the words before they even fully form, “you will not be going as Iron Man. That is not a costume. That is work and you cannot bring work to a party. It’s considered poor taste.”

Tony rolls his eyes, deflating. “Then no. I don’t have a costume.”

“If Peter is going as Superman, you should be Batman. He would love it.”

“I’ll go as whoever I want to go as.”

Which they both know means he’ll be going as Batman, because Peter really would love that.

*

Halloween day dawns on a Saturday.

Clint wakes everyone in the tower with a wooden spoon to the back of a stock pot and Natasha threatens to put the spoon in very uncomfortable places that has Thor covering Peter’s ears as they both come to the kitchen.

Bruce has made a buffet of Halloween breakfast items including pancakes in the shape of ghosts and witches with the assistance of a squeeze bottle and chocolate chips. Eggs have been dyed green and a hash has been made with bacon and bell peppers and put into tiny cauldrons that have Clint’s name all over them.

It’s surprisingly awesome and it sets the mood for the day.

Directly after, Peter dashes off as quickly as possible to get dressed in his costume, and comes back with his cape fluttering. He demands Nat come fix his hair and then wants to know why they aren’t all getting into their costumes.

“It’s Hall’ween!” he declares, flapping his arms like he might take off.

It’s like nothing even happened two months ago and that’s beautiful.

The adults don’t get dressed until later in the evening and since Tony has to go do meet and greet with all the people who’ve been invited, he goes to his room to pull on the Batman outfit. He feels ridiculous, but when he looks in the mirror, he doesn’t look too terrible be supposes.

“I never thought I’d say this, but Batman looks sexy.”

Tony spins from his self-assessment, finding Steve in the doorway, leaning against the jamb and smirking at him as his eyes roam over him.

Rolls his eyes, but he feels a smile growing on his face. “He better not be sexier that Iron Man or you’re back in your room for the rest of the week.”

Steve shakes his head, holding his hands up. “Oh no. Batman has nothing on Iron Man. I know better than to even think that. Especially since I get the feeling the second I move my clothes out of it, Clint and Natasha are going to turn my room into a little dojo so they can start teaching Peter martial arts.”

Tony perks. “Oh. That’s not a horrible idea actually. I’ll start looking into mats and equipment for them. It’s never too early to learn self-defense.”

Steve smiles, pushing himself away from the door, moving closer to Tony. He settles his big hands on Tony’s sides. “I’m still in there, technically.”

“Not for long, fella. Best get your shit together because I am on board with their plan in a big bad way. Like…actually, after the party, just go ahead and move your things in here. I’ll probably have someone in on Monday to start looking at construction and all that.”

Steve huffs an amused breath, shaking his head in a distinctly fond manner. “You’re so romantic, baby.” He leans in and Tony finds himself being kissed again, not that he really minds at all. He’s actually still pretty enamored with the idea of kissing Steve. When Steve pulls away, he hums. “Glad you kept the beard.”

“Batman does not warrant a shave. I’ve had this thing for so long I feel naked without it. I shaved once like two years before we met and I just about drove myself crazy.”

“Nothing new there,” Steve says and kisses him again before he can even fully form the offended squawk. Then there’s a smack to his ass and a scoot in the direction of the door. “Go on. Peter’s about ready to combust and you’ve got people to greet.”

“Yeah, yeah. Business before pleasure. I’ll see you down there.”

He gets to the kitchen wearing full Batman regalia to see his son sitting on a stool and kicking his legs impatiently. He grins before he can stop himself. “Hey, Superman. You ready to party?”

Peter looks up and his eyes go wide at seeing Tony in his costume for the first time. “Daddy, you look so cool!” He jumps up from his seat and goes to inspect, circling Tony and holding his cape critically. “This is the best Halloween ever!”

He hops back around to Tony’s front, looking up at him with wide brown eyes and perfectly styled hair that Nat has had to fix no less than ten times today. She always does it with a smile though. He lifts his arms up, looking expectant and Tony is horrible at saying no. He picks his baby boy up and settles him on his hip.

“Alright. Let’s see if we can make it even better. Quick! To the Hall of Justice!”

Peter pumps his fist in the air, grinning widely with sparkling eyes and they’re off.

When they get to the first floor, it looks nothing like it did yesterday afternoon when he and Peter had accompanied Steve to the store to help with groceries. All of the things he had sneered at earlier are on display. Pumpkins, ghosts, spider webs and bats are covering just about everything. If it had stayed still too long, it had been decorated.

Pepper is by the door, checking her watch. She’s dressed as Raggedy Ann and her fiancé, Happy, is dressed as Raggedy Andy. They look adorable and he sets Peter down to go say hello. Good god, but he practically flies over to show off his cape and his cool boots. They ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ appropriately, and Pepper fixes and errant piece of hair calling him handsome. Peter looks so damn pleased with himself it isn’t even funny.

The guests begin pouring in, all of them dressed up and soon the Avengers come down in their own outfits. His favorite is probably Natasha. She’s wearing her hair down in curls, swept over her shoulder with a beautiful pink gown. She’s come to his party as Ariel. He kind of loves her for it.

Clint has come as Han Solo despite Tony’s insistence that he go as Katniss. He’s kind of upset about that, but he managed to convince Bruce to come as Rambo, so he regains some cool points. Thor arrived with a cereal box, dressed in nothing more than jeans and a tee shirt and told Pepper, “I’m dressed as a Midguardian.” It’s so cheating but Jane and Darcy show up, Jane dressed as Madam Curie, but Darcy dressed as a Cereal Killer. She promptly stabs Thor’s box of Lucky Charms with a butter knife and screams, “DIE!” It makes everyone laugh, except for Thor who inspects his cereal for damage.

 When Steve finally exits the elevator, Tony smiles. He’d not been made aware of Steve’s choice of outfit, but it’s perfect. He’s in a completely red suit, picking at the skin tight costume with a look of disdain, but the yellow lightning bolt on his chest fills him with warmth.

Tony strolls over to him with a smile while Peter is playing with Gwen, doing the Hokey Pokey with the enthusiasm only five year olds can have. Gwen’s father watches them with a frown, but at this point, he doesn’t really think the man can smile. Turning his attention back to Steve, he smiles widely and pinches his ass.

Steve gives him a dirty look, but otherwise doesn’t say anything, which is fine, because Tony fills the space up anyway. “Flash, huh?”

Steve grimaces. “I was going to go as Aquaman, but everyone argued loudly. Kinda wishing I had ignored them though. This outfit is uncomfortable.” He picks at the suit again, wiggling.

Tony cannot help but watch him as he does a miniature dance to get everything situated before he shakes his head. “No. No, I think it looks great. We should take a family photo. Like I would legitimately hang that above the fireplace if we had one.”

“Put a sock in it, Tony.”

He laughs, pushing his shoulder into Steve’s. “Come on, sourpuss! You’ll forget all about it as soon as you start carving a pumpkin. We have at least four hundred so people better get the knives out.”

They move through the crowd together, shaking hands and bending down to take pictures with other miniature DC fans, and okay a few of the other adult DC fans, because there’s never enough pictures to be taken and they all kind of love making people smile, even Nat who sits on the floor with at least four other Disney princesses, three of them Elsas.

When the Hokey Pokey ends, he slides into Peter’s view with Steve and Peter’s eyes widen.

“Cap! You Didn’ tell me you was gonna be Flash! That’s awesome!” He runs around Steve just as he had with Tony and all the other Avengers except for Thor, whom he had looked up at with a frown of disappointment until he received a handful of cereal from the guard. He looks very pleased with Steve’s choice of costume though and puts his hands on his hips just like Superman, smiling up at him. “Can we go get canny now?”

Steve squats down to his level, and thus Gwen, because she firmly ignores her father when Peter is in the picture. “Actually, I was thinking it might be just about time to go carve pumpkins. Candy can be had afterwards. What do you two say?”

Gwen is all over it, as Tony suspected she would be. She’s all for anything that even hints at fun and messes and candy does not meet those qualifications. She picks up her toy phaser, since she seems to be a Startfleet member of some sort. She’s wearing red, but Tony couldn’t tell you want that means as he never really got into Star Trek the way he did with Star Wars.

“Okay, then…Let’s go hack into some poor unsuspecting squash.” Tony nods to Gwen’s parents, Mrs. Stacy holding a young toddler and looking ready to fill out that fertility goddess outfit quite nicely. “You’re more than welcome to come with.”

Mrs. Stacy smiles even though Mr. Stacy is still scowling and looks about ready to follow them into the fray just so they don’t have a chance to corrupt his daughter or something. Mrs. Stacy shakes her head. “No…I think if you don’t mind watching her, I’m going to go peruse the snack table. Honey…come on.”

She drags Mr. Stacy away, and even though he doesn’t look happy about it, he apparently has more sense than to argue with the woman carrying his third child. Steve calls after her that they’ll keep an eye on Gwen and she waves back, bouncing her son a little before handing him to his dad.

Tony holds out his hand for Gwen and Steve takes Pete’s, and together the four of them make their way toward the pumpkin carving center where there are so many damn pumpkins already, guts everywhere. Seeds can be taken home or Stark Industries will send them back to farmers and pumpkin patches, guts saved for compost and the like because while Tony is very interested in going Green, Pepper is taking it to the next level.

They sit down and are handed their own pumpkins to carve. It is probably more enjoyable than he thought it would be…maybe. The kids are all around, delighting in the mess they’re making of themselves and the table, little faces twisted in concentration as they’re handed tiny knives that Steve and Tony teach them how to properly handle. The pumpkins aren’t the most skilled or the most logical, but they’re still amazing in their own right and Tony pulls out his phone from his utility belt to take pictures of all four of the pumpkins before they’re labelled and taken away for safe keeping until the end of the night.

The kids go bobbing for apples and then they all go for a trip through the haunted ghost tour which is creepy, but not terrifying so there are few tears from any of the kids, if any at all. They meet up with the Stacy’s and hand Gwen back to them before taking their own son to gather candy and goodies from the vendors that are all around the first floor of the Tower.

All the while, Tony and all the Avengers have direct links to JARVIS and no trouble is forth coming. Whatever terrors there are in the real world, it seems they’re taking the holiday as well and he and Pete and the rest of the Avengers are free to take the night off like a normal family.

It’s an absolute blessing.

*

At the end of the night, Peter is bouncing around the penthouse, high on candy and happiness. He runs around, an edge of his bright red cape held in each hand while the rest of the adults rest around the living room. Bruce, surprisingly, out of all of them chases Peter around, most of his Rambo costume abandoned so it just looks like regular ol’ Banner chasing a toddler around the room.

Jane and Darcy are each tucked into one side of Thor, looking exhausted. Jane already looks to be half asleep while Darcy seems to be zoning out to Hocus Pocus that plays on the television. Clint is curled up with his head in Natasha’s lap, mouthing the lines of the movie while Natasha eats enough candy to rival Peter and doesn’t even show signs of sugar shock…amazing.

Peter giggles, so happy. The attack on the tower is so far out of everyone’s mind, it may as well be a distant memory and it fills Tony with so much relief to see. There’s no fear in his son’s eyes and when he comes running up, climbing over Clint and Tasha, and scrambling to curl up in Steve’s arms, looking back at Bruce like he’s totally and completely powerless do to anything now, which is fine because Bruce looks like he’s been getting winded.

“Safe!” Peter yells, breathing heavily and reaching into some unknown pocket of his outfit to pull out a half melted Snickers. Tony should probably make an effort to take away the candy and put the little boy to bed, but he can’t convince himself to do so just yet and really, tomorrow is Sunday. It’s not like he has to go to school tomorrow. “Can’t get me or you might make Cap mad.”

Bruce holds his hands up, doing a fairly good job of looking chastised when everyone but Peter knows that Cap is not the one you need to worry about getting mad. “Alright. Alright,” Bruce concedes. “I know when I’m beat. I guess I’ll just go sulk in my corner with the rest of the punch.”

“No, wait. I want the punch!” Peter scrambles off Steve’s lap again and by the face he makes a small hand dug into a kidney. Good thing the man is super soldier, or Peter might have bruised some internal organs by now. “Can I has some!?”

Steve sets him on the ground and Peter’s feet are moving almost before they touch the ground, which makes Bruce laugh and hold out his hand. “Yeah. You can have some…so long as I hear that special word.”

“Daddy says I can’t repeat his special words or Cap will put me in time out.”

Tony hears no less than four different snorts and Nat is apparently choking on her water after Peter’s very serious rebuttal.

Bruce chuckles but shakes his head, looking like he somehow did not see that coming. He reaches out to push Peter’s hair back into place, rubbing his thumb along his cheekbone. “Your dad’s special words aren’t the one I’m talking about. Can I get a please?”

“Oh!” the little boy exclaims. “Can I please has some punch?”

“Yeah, buddy. Come on. We’ll get you another glass.”

They move out of the living room and Tony sighs, resting his head on Steve’s shoulder as the sound of Bruce and Peter talking fades into the background.

“I’ll put him in time out if he uses your special words?” Steve murmurs as he turns his head to kiss his hair.

Tony shrugs, a little smirk on his face. “I can’t tell him I’ll be the one in trouble or he’d just turn it into a game.”

Steve shakes his head, kissing his hair again and murmuring something that sounds an awful lot like bad influence or something, but he can’t really be sure and he can’t find it in himself to probe. He’s too happy with the way tonight turned out. Peter got to dress up and have a mostly normal Halloween and Tony got to make sure it was safe and controlled and he got the bonus of seeing Steve in skin tight spandex.

Maybe Halloween isn’t so bad…for now.


End file.
